The following is a summary of Apple Daily/United Morning Post’s observations on Xi Jinping’s report at the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress:

Reading the full text, the first impression is that it is trying to de-personalize (downplay) the names of Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and even Deng Xiaoping {from the CCP’s chapters}. The reports of the recent Party congresses have constantly mentioned Deng Xiaoping Theory, the three represents, and the scientific concept of development. However, Xi almost failed to mention the names of Jiang and Hu in his report. He only mentioned the three represents and scientific development once. Even Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping’s names only appeared once.

On the contrary, “socialism” and “people” were mentioned 146 and 202 times respectively. These two words in the political context of the Chinese Communist Party have special implications with a deep mark of Mao Zedong’s brand. During the Cultural Revolution, they appeared frequently together with Mao Zedong Thought, great leaders, and class struggle in the CCP’s mouthpiece and documents. Xi’s report repeatedly mentioned Marx (19 times), which was also rare in the past Party Congress report.

Second, Xi Jinping spent more than half of the report describing how the past five years’ commitments got fully implemented and at the same time depicting the beautiful landscape of future development — the “new utopia” for the CCP and the Chinese people.

Strangely, Xi Jinping achievement that he is most proud of — anti-corruption — was not discussed much in the report; it was only mentioned seven times. Xi talked more about his strict rule of the rectification of the party. Perhaps, he did not want to let Wang Qishan {Xi’s chief assistant in the anti-corruption campaign} grab the limelight or perhaps anti-corruption has caused dissatisfaction within the party and thus talking about anti-corruption too much was not appropriate.